Indian Exchange Resumes Fiat Deposits and Withdrawals Using New Method

An Indian cryptocurrency exchange has come up with a new method to allow its users to deposit and withdraw rupees despite the crypto banking ban by the country’s central bank. The exchange also guarantees that rupee requests will be processed within 30 minutes or the user will receive ten free XRP credited to their account.

Creative Ways Around RBI Ban

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the country’s central bank, issued a circular in April banning all financial institutions under its control from providing services to crypto exchanges. The ban went into effect in July and banks began closing accounts of crypto exchanges, prompting a number of them to come up with creative solutions for INR deposits and withdrawals. Some launched exchange-escrowed peer-to-peer (P2P) services; some crypto-to-crypto trading.

One crypto exchange in particular claims to have found a way around the ban. Giottus, which also offers exchange-escrowed P2P trading service, reopened its fiat support despite the RBI ban. The platform offers BTC, ETH, BCH, XRP, and LTC trading pairs.

The exchange explained that INR withdrawals are only processed during banking hours, adding that “withdrawal requests received after 5 p.m. will take a maximum of 10 hrs or will be credited [the] next day (whichever is earliest).”

Giottus’ Method

Giottus co-founder and COO, Arjun Vijay, recently explained to Ambcrypto publication that his exchange is able to offer INR deposit and withdrawal services “by identifying specific traders who can process deposits and withdrawals quickly. This is still done through P2P, allowing the traders to still function normally,” the news outlet conveyed and quoted Vijay saying:

We have now started processing INR deposits and withdrawals through these selected P2P partners and they currently on average process requests within 15 minutes. As a safety measure, we take collateral from these P2P partners, and these partners, as service fee charge 0.2% for the deposits and 0.2% for the withdrawals.

Vijay further noted that traders can process volumes of up to approximately 60-70 percent of their collateral deposited with the exchange before additional collateral is required.